So, Apple held its usual autumn press get-together just now, and after a few rather uninspiring ones (to me, at least), they finally managed to blow me away, with the new MacBook Air (especially the 11.6" variant). They also gave a sneak peek at Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which has... An App Store. An App Store Apple is going to open on Snow Leopard within 90 days.

"Reinstall" is actually a further confirmation of what 'restore' would have indicated.
That they don't support repair, but rather only a full system wipe.
Again, ludicrous in this day and age.

What's ludicrous is that you are obviously stating as fact things you have never used. If you had used a Mac before, or even bothered to read the MacBook Air User guide on Apple.com, you would know that you can do repairs and other maint. with the reinstall drive. You can repair permissions, disk errors, reset password, and other utilities, likely the same things you can do with an install DVD.

You are not forced to do a complete wipe, which is called "Erase and Install". You can also choose to re-install Mac OS X without erasing your user data, docs, etc.

Perhaps you should use something or at the least do a little research before you state "facts" and get all angry about something you know nothing about...